Hell

The sinners of the last round
lie completely sealed in ice…
--Canto XXXIV, Circle 9: The Inferno

You’ve heard the jokes
about the insurance salesman and some guy
locked in a soundproof eight-by-ten cell,
or the one about being stalled in traffic
with your mother-in-law and her choir of tongues,
the windows cranked up and with no heat.

In grammar school, the old Irish priest
told us the walls were
four thousand miles thick,
that the fire was without seam and everlasting
like a Latin teacher’s conjugation of verbs.

But I always thought it was the way
Hieronymus Bosch saw it with special effects,
vapors and strobe lights, or like being trapped
with an eternity of Munch’s screamers,
their faces dripping that dripless wax.

Today it’s a used car salesman
who won’t give you back your car keys,
or the hail of Have a nice day from the cashier
who is buffing her nails and snapping her gum,
you looking up from the circle of ice,
the defroster in your car still not working.


“Hell” was originally published in Spoon River Poetry Review, 1993.

“Hell” was also published in an anthology entitled “A Taste of Poetry, Chicago Style” in 1996.

After His Witnessing an Argument with My Father

(for Geoffrey Glen)

I tell my son there are things
one should never say, hurtful words,
like liar and cheat.

The heart holds whatever it hears
for a long time, I say.
The tongue is the mind’s fist.

I want to find the right words
to make a difference
for the wrong ones,

if recovering from them is possible,
to tell him some things from my heart
I have never said to anyone.

I can tell him what it felt like
to carry his grandmother
down the stairs after she died,

how once while sitting by her bedside
I was punched into silence
as I watched her sip

from an imaginary teacup,
how each day is an act of forgiveness,
and that the mind will know

only what it has learned
but is last to discover
what the heart has known forever.

But I know this talk is for me.
Metaphor bleeds through the words
while he stares out the passenger’s window.


“After His Witnessing an Argument with My Father” was originally published in Poet & Critic, 1994.

Postscript to an Elegy

 

A Small Plot in the Short Story of Our Lives

We went to her home to celebrate

her sixty-fourth.

My father made dinner,

and when my sister arrived

we sang Happy Birthday.

We looked for signs,

without knowing what to look for.

We ate her favorite cake, pineapple cheese, 
disguised with whipped cream.

She opened gifts,

and my sister’s youngest son

brought a bright burst
of red-and-white carnations

in a small blue vase,

delicate as our hope.

I read a few poems

about Elizabeth and Race Street,

a small plot in the short story of our lives,

and we believed that we once lived recklessly

but in a more sensible time,

that sorrow will belong to all of us

at the end of our lives.

She was wearing her new wig,

and I thought about her

lying on the gurney, the long tube in her nose

that filled her lungs with water,

and how they rinsed her kidneys for four hours

before they dripped Cisplatin and Vinblastine

through a needle in her vein,

slowly as an hourglass.

She did not want to tell us

about her headaches and nausea,

about her arms that bruised easily as peaches,

and how her fingertips tingled.

But we asked her,

and we trespassed on her life,

not knowing that the denouement

lay just beyond her next birthday.

Watching My Mother Die

Hope slammed its door

behind my mother’s right ear

where tumors grew like broadleaf weeds.

Her hands, even more frail now,

trembled from a fractured life.

These were hands that once pulled a die

from a child’s nose,

pushed slivers out of his fingers

with straight pins,

and soothed fevers and bad dreams.

Betrayal turned her hands to a light-blue thinness—

unable to do the things required of the living.

Black branches spread across her lungs 

and welded to her cerebellum. Her faced distended.

Her mouth erupted with tiny sores.

Her eyes held the tell-tale sign

while she lay silently staring 

at the discord of medicine bottles,

impassive icons, and votive candles

on her bedroom dresser.

Hanging in the Balance

My mother, 

her head sinking into pillows,

cursed squirrels—their high-wire acts,

these other lives hanging in the balance,

crossing telephone cable 

high above her bedroom window.

For days, they made her flash accents of life.

“They keep me awake all day long,

running on the roof,” she’d say.

My father—

his old legs wobbling on rungs,

the cage held tightly in one hand,

the trip wire set and smeared with peanut butter—  

trapped squirrels off the pitched roof.

“I caught eleven and one robin,” he said.

“I brought them to the cemetery and let them go.”

The robin remained, 

its bold breast blazing through the bony tree.

My father and I listened for gray squirrels.

“They’ll never come back,” I said.

And the World Kept on Living

It was as easy as withholding food and water

from someone whose world had turned

in to migraines and morphine.

So why do I have to know 
if she floated above me like some magical act

while the vinyl bag zipped closed 
over her swollen face,  

and if death is more than what it is?

Why do I have to know 
whether her prayers helped,

and if her long suffering 
and Catholic indulgences

paid dividends like mutual funds,

and whether dreamless sleep 
is just a short rehearsal

for the only afterlife we will never know?

And why do I have to know

the endings to unfinished stories,

and if all her collections 

were meaningful to her
at the end of her life

like the passive, religious figurines

that had nothing but cheap plaster for souls?

The day she died, billions of white crystals

buried her home 
in a cold fusion of free-falling light,

and the world kept on living.

Dorothy Brown (December 19, 1925 - December 30, 1990)

Bartleby the Scrivener

Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!
--Herman Melville

Perhaps he lost the language of desire,
hope checking out first
with its twin baggage of want and need,
hunger leaving no forwarding address.

Or maybe the language of etiquette
surrendered its meaning,
the tongue holding diplomacy hostage
behind a green folding screen.

Let’s presume he was stunned into silence
by God’s loneliness, by the fixed glare
of the black wall just beyond
the small side-window courting a dim light.

So much to prefer not to while the grass
and sky stitched together a singular void,
and the bud of Existentialism took root
deep within his heart, denial sprouting

against the dead letters and bricks
that merged into a mortuary of self-interest.
He knew nothingness soon becomes a stranger
to no one; preferring it was his last resistance.


“Bartleby the Scrivener” was originally published by Lake Shore Publishing, 1995.

Biopsy of a Free-Lance Writer’s Attack on Teachers

Recently, I received an email about someone who had attempted to satirically criticize a few questions that I had about progressive tax reform as a solution to the state’s budget deficits, but his attempt at mockery turned into an ad hominem attack on Illinois teachers. For your perusal, here is a few of Mr. BZ's Deceptive and Uneducated Manipulative Bull (BZDUMB).

To begin, consider one of Mr. BZDUMB’s introductory statements: “Why for example should WI have only one teacher with a salary over $100,000 when in 2010 IL had 6,855 teachers with salaries over $100,000?…”

There are over 171,000 active teachers in Illinois (Teachers Retirement System). Even if Mr. BZDUMB is correct about 6,855 teachers that have salaries over $100,000, besides committing the fallacy of composition (to reason that the properties or minority of individuals are necessarily the properties of the whole which they constitute – in other words, four percent of a population is not representative of the whole), what has he established except for his conspicuously-deep prejudice against teachers who will have earned a constitutionally-promised pension that they have consistently contributed to throughout their careers and was under-funded by the State of Illinois?

Let’s consider his next statements: “…Tax credits for jobs continues [sic] to be the Hail Mary pass of progressive economic thinking. Like Obama and Geithner, Brown has no experience in the business world and obviously has no idea why businessmen hire new employees. They hire because business is expanding not because they might get a small tax credit. So what would happen if this type of law were passed would be [sic] tax credits going to employers who were going to hire anyway. In other words a complete waste of taxpayer dollars [sic]. This is another in a long line of progressive ad verecundiam fallacies i.e. ‘appeal to improper authority.’ Examples of these fallacious arguments would be asking [sic] Mike Ditka to explain the Theory of Relativity or asking Einstein to predict the Super Bowl winner or asking Obama/Geithner/Brown to devise effective business tax policy…”

Indeed, companies hire because they want to increase their profits and meet their customers’ demands. (Mr. BZDUMB must have had a lemonade stand as a child). But does Mr. BZDUMB fully understand the ad verecundiam fallacy and assume, for instance, that his readers will not recognize a claim that employs a ludicrous faulty analogy to make a point? It is ironical that he refers to ad verecundiam, (the fallacy of substantive distraction through various appeals to pedantic words and phrases, detail and specificity, references, quotations, length, or mathematical symbols), when he uses no creditable references or any appeal to ethos in his disagreement. Moreover, his comments about “the Hail Mary pass of progressive economic thinking” announce his unwillingness to examine questions and evidence fairly.

Now examine his following statements: “…Mr. Brown’s position represents that of a large group of entitled political elitists, usually public employees, who think all solutions lead to tax increases and/or targeted Progressive tax credits which is the same thing. In spite of Solyandra [sic] he wants more tax money for ineffective and unworkable green projects; in spite of $6.8 billion in new taxes in IL he wants more taxes on the ‘rich’ and new sales taxes on services; without any experience in business matters he wants tax credits for hiring even though it is useless as a job creating function.”

Besides Mr. BZDUMB’s attempt to conjure a “now I got ‘em” emotional response from his conservative tea-party comrades through use of such terms as “elitist” and “progressive,” he simplifies a set of circumstances and prefers an erroneous response to a complicated issue. He presents an irrelevant allusion to Solyndra that establishes another one of his disconnected generalizations. Mr. BZDUMB failed to note that the questions I had asked explored a broader-based taxation system that would provide a decrease in taxes for low-income and many middle-income families. Let us imagine for a moment how much money would be available for services for ninety-nine percent of the state’s population if the top one percent of the populace paid its “fair share” and corporations paid their “full taxes” to the state. Moreover, “[a state that does not tax services, such as Illinois], probably could increase [its] sales tax revenue by more than one-third if [it] taxed services purchased by households comprehensively” (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, July 2009).

Ponder these next claims: “…pension sustainability is eating the budget alive… note that the $6.8 billion tax increase implemented last year will just cover the pension obligation next year. Then also notice that in 2015 when the supposedly 'temporary' tax increase expires [sic] the pension obligation jumps to $7.9 billion. The $6.8 billion for next year represents about 20% of the General Fund Revenue. That’s 20% of the budget to pay for pensions for 5% of Illinois workers…,” [and] “…how big are those (taxpayer) pension liabilities? At the end of 2010 they were $135 billion according [sic] the state actuaries but perhaps as much as $270 billion by critics. And those numbers do not include taxpayer liabilities of $17 billion for Pension Obligation Bonds and perhaps another $40 billion for retiree health care. Notice that all of these liabilities, somewhere in the range of $200 to $325 billion, are TAXPAYER liabilities and not employee/retiree liabilities. That is the problem…”

Mr. BZDUMB subscribes to the Chicago Tribune and, though the unfunded liabilities of the pension systems remain in perpetuity, what he also fails to acknowledge is that they grew exponentially because of the state’s deliberate and inconsistent funding methods, the state’s unreliable accounting methods, and the state’s deceitful “backroom deals” that were to be funded with future monies (by the way, they occurred without teachers’ knowledge or approval). Furthermore, what he conveniently fails to remember is that the scapegoating of public employees began when greed and corruption, particularly flagrant in the financial sector, ignited the Great Recession. This, of course, came after eight years of inordinate military spending for two costly wars, deregulation and unprecedented tax cuts for the wealthy by the federal government. This tsunami of debt contributed to every state’s budget deficits.

Mr. BZDUMB fails to admit that Wall Street bankers and hedge fund thieves created the crisis; he does not comment on the fact that deregulation, derivatives and two costly wars have contributed to state deficits. In addition, he says nothing about the state’s underfunding of the pension systems and its resultant benefits reaped by Illinois taxpayers for several decades because he prefers the fallacy of begging the question (assuming as true what has yet to be proved) and to arouse fear (a fallacy of argument ad metum), resentment (a fallacy of argument ad odium) and ignorance instead. We have heard the often skewed allegation that “it’s unfair for the ninety-five percent to pay for the pensions of the five percent” when, in fact, according to TRS, for the past 20 years, approximately seventy-five percent of the teachers’ pension system has been funded by long-term investments, teachers’ contributions, and the State (from FY 1991-FY 2010, excluding FY 2004 pension obligation bond proceeds). Two-thirds of the state’s contributions are for the debt service or interest that the State of Illinois owes because of delinquent payments to the teachers’ pension system.

Reflect upon his concluding remarks: “…we should implement taxes on all IL public pensions and restore the $456 million in cuts to student transportation, Dept. of Aging, mental health and disabilities, Public Health, Children and Family Services and the homeless. In fact taxing and suspending the COLA only on teachers with pensions over $100,000 would provide enough funds to restore the $17 million in cuts to the Department of Aging and the $6 million in cuts to the Department of Children and Family Services…

“What the rest of us want is fewer Mr. Brown’s in public ‘service’; lower salaries for the fewer Mr. Brown’s that remain; lesser pensions and health care cost for the fewer Mr. Brown’s that remain; more work (hrs. /day, days per year) from the Mr. Brown’s that remain: fewer public functions (regulations) for the fewer Mr. Brown’s to perform/monitor/watch.”

Ah! Now we finally discover his real intentions for writing his squabble. Mr. BZDUMB’s “zavist” (a fallacy of argument ad invidiam or, in this case, an extreme envy of a teacher’s pension) obscures any objective attempt to respond to the salient questions that I had presented for serious discussion regarding pension and tax reform in Illinois. Perhaps he had a few traumatic experiences in his formative years (Was he bullied by his classmates or a teacher in grade school?). Though it is difficult to assume whether he ever went to college based upon his attempt at writing an essay, he is indubitably “without any experience” in logic, ethics, and legality.

What Mr. BZDUMB fails to understand (because of his provincial ideas and partiality) is that pension reform is an educational issue and that an essential goal for any state when considering pension reform is to attract and retain the finest possible teacher candidates available through salaries that are commensurate with their education and experience (just like remunerations for college-educated employees in the private sector). Unfortunately, many school districts in Illinois are dependent upon an antiquated and inequitable system of property taxes for most of their schools’ revenue; thus, injustices abound. What’s more, pension reform is a political and financial issue that will affect hundreds of thousands of people; it must be evaluated not only for affordability, but for fairness, sustainability and constitutionality.

We can assume that Mr. BZDUMB does not believe that pension reform should concur with the State and U.S. Constitutions and, therefore, be defended. We can also assume that he watches Fox News (which ironically pointed out at one time that the bankers’ “bonuses” should be honored notwithstanding of the taxpayers’ bailout because “they were contractual agreements” and “that we have to attract the brightest” among them with future guarantees). Of course, if anyone were to default on a contractual promise to Mr. BZDUMB, we could perhaps imagine an improved and deductive response from him.

Like the Civic Committee's Illinois Is Broke and its spawns, Mr. BZDUMB offers his readers a fallacy of non sequitur (the conclusion is not necessitated by the premises); he finds it self-serving to confound the facts of the matter and to shift the blame on teachers for the resultant economic debacle occurring in Illinois. He does not consider the fact that claims are most effective when supported by evidence that is sufficient, accurate, and relevant, and that arguments are not substantiated when they are buoyed by deleterious and fallacious reasoning, tabloid thinking, questionable statistics, inapt allusions, and appeals to intolerance and prejudice. Insightful questioning is meant to stimulate an authentic debate; moreover, Mr. BZDUMB’s fallacious and condescending quips (many of which I did not bother to address) are designed to terminate further analysis and synthesis of a crucial and complex argument.

-Glen Brown

Hum If You Can’t Sing

So what if at every conflict in life we burst
into song – thoughtless as reciting a prayer –

reward our feet with a waltz or two,
congratulate ourselves with an aria

then tap dance our way through
the kitchen and dining room?

And suppose the musicians arrive early
each morning to tune up their strings

and oil their drums
while the white-gloved conductor waits

with his cue sheet at the breakfast table?
Would we expect a chorus prophesying disaster

or a fugue in D-minor? Why not ask 

for a drum roll through toiletry instead

or a diminuendo through dinner?
And what might our friends and spouse say

about all that sheet music stuffed in our pockets,
about our lives cluttered with voice lessons,

rehearsals and women dressed in high heels
and fishnet stockings?

Imagine the fun of it all, the spotlight
on us all as we dance and sing

throughout our lives with our pets joining in
with happy tails, and birds whistling

from their cages, encouraging applause
for our pitch-perfect singing each day.


“Hum If You Can't Sing” was originally published in Prairie Light Review, 1992.
 

In the Crosshairs

For five days the buck hung
from the wrought-iron grate,

a large, brown buck, heavy with muscle.
Its eyes held the look of an animal

about to be shot.
Raymond Benedetti, a pharmacist,

with a half-dozen hunting dogs
smelling of musk-rank fur,

worked his knife into its belly,
unknotting entrails before my eyes.

It wasn’t until the fifth day
that someone complained

about the stench and sound
of the chainsaw grinding through bone,

about the head that lay
on the front stoop one evening,

its deciduous antlers hacked from the skull.
I watched as a young boy would, an accomplice,

under a pale gray Midwestern sky
deep in November.

The neighbor’s cats kept their distance,
the air charged with pity and thanksgiving.


“In the Crosshairs” was originally published in Willow Review, 1993.

“In the Crosshairs” received an award from Poets & Patrons of Illinois in 1993.

 

Tax Reform! Not Pension Reform, Budget Cuts and Tax Breaks for the Wealthy

An article in the State Journal Register (November 17, 2011) states that the five public pension systems need $5.33 billion for fiscal year 2013, approximately one billion dollars more than was originally anticipated, though Governor Quinn also says that state revenue is expected to grow by $1.3 billion next year.

This amount has increased 20% overall because of increases of approximately $700 to $800 million for Medicaid; changes in assumptions by actuaries from the State University Retirement System; the passing of SB 1946 (Public Act 96-0889) in April of 2010 that caps new public employees’ salaries and lowers their benefits; (note: there will be less money available for contributions to the pension systems); and, most importantly, because larger payments are needed today as a result of the faulty 1995 “ramp-up” funding law (Public Act 88-593) to pay the pension systems what the state owes because of its lack of payments to the pension systems for decades and its lofty goal of a 90-percent funding ratio by 2045 (Wetterich) -- even though only 15 states in the nation have a funded ratio slightly over 70 percent while the average funding ratio is 63 percent (Barclays Capital, May 2011). (According to the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (May 2011), “a funded ratio of 70 percent or above is [considered more than] adequate”).

It is true pension reform will not address the current unfunded liability and that what the state's legislators should focus upon is structural reforms for revenue and pension debt, but they have no political will to do it. Solving the shortfall between available assets and accrued liabilities is not the issue. It’s a symptom of a greater cause. Pension systems carry liabilities into perpetuity because they are “perpetual government agencies” (The Teachers’ Retirement System of Illinois). There is never a need to match assets and liabilities ever.

It is also true that most state legislators lack the political backbone to address the causes of the budget problems but prefer scapegoating public employees and their pension systems instead. They are abetted by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Civic Federation and the Chicago Tribune, to name just a few. Illinois legislators do not want to pay what is owed to the public pension systems even though past legislators, especially past governors, were the cause of the public pension systems’ lack of funding throughout the decades.

What is needed to solve the budget problems in Illinois is a better revenue base to pay the state’s self-induced debts. What is easier to do is to evade serious problem solving of the budget issue and to incriminate the state’s public employees.

The issue at hand is the state’s regressive tax rate that no one wants to confront. The public lacks awareness and understanding about the main causes of the state’s budget deficits. Legislators, the Civic Committee, et al. have capitalized on the public's ignorance of the essential causes of the state's financial debacle by calling for budget cuts and radical pension reform as the solutions. They are diversionary, scapegoating tactics that will bring intentional, financial harm to public employees and allow legislators to escape legal and ethical responsibility.

“At the core of the budget ‘crisis’ facing [Illinois] is [its] regressive state tax structure… that is, low-and-middle-income families pay a greater share of their income in taxes than the wealthy… [A regressive tax] disproportionately impacts low-income people because, unlike the wealthy, [low-income people] are forced to spend a majority of their income purchasing basic needs that are subject to sales taxes” (United for a Fair Economy).

Instead of reforming the state's tax system, legislators (and their wealthy subsidizers) have focused on radical pension reform and severe budget cuts to services that the rest of us need. What do the wealthy and their puppet legislators propose? They propose sweeping, radical pension reform that will destroy the public employees’ defined-benefit pension plans, even though they know current unfunded liabilities will not be resolved by pension reform.

In addition, Illinois legislators propose budget cuts that will undermine healthcare for children, the elderly and low-income families; budget cuts that will prolong and increase the state’s unemployment; budget cuts in public safety and transportation; budget cuts in education; and budget cuts that will stifle economic recovery.

It is true that if the State of Illinois “does not [create] a contemporary tax system, one that is both sound and responsive to the needs of state, basic and necessary programs face the chopping block” (Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, CTBA).

Consider, for example, budget cuts in K through 12 and higher education: “Disparities in [the state’s] school funding and, therefore, quality of education, would be significantly reduced if the primary basis for school funding was on state revenues,” and that is why Illinois is “next to last in a ranking of states based on funds spent on education” (CTBA). As it is now, property taxes used as the main sources of revenue for school funding guarantee income inequalities among school districts throughout the State of Illinois.

Let’s be concerned about why the State of Illinois cannot obtain more revenue. Besides federal sources of income, the state uses only 11 sources of revenue: personal income tax (but note that Illinois was tied for the fourth lowest individual tax rate on households in the top income bracket), corporate income tax (note the recent extortionate tax breaks given to some Illinois corporations), sales tax (note that Illinois does not tax services like most other states for another significant source of revenue), corporate franchise tax and fees, public utility taxes, vehicle use tax, inheritance tax, insurance taxes and fees, cigarette taxes, liquor taxes and other miscellaneous (or rather unsubstantial) tax sources (Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, June 2011).

In regards to sales taxes, “a majority of states apply their sales tax to less than one-third of 168 potentially-taxable services… [States that do not tax services, such as Illinois], probably could increase [its] sales tax revenue by more than one-third if [it] taxed services purchased by households comprehensively” (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, July 2009).

Consider that a broader-based taxation system would provide a decrease in taxes for low-income and many middle-income families. Taxing services alone “would generate enough revenue to stabilize the General Revenue Fund and prevent structural deficits that lead to cuts in basic needs and social service programs” (CTBA). As long as our legislators play their political ping pong game with one another, it is impossible to obtain any just resolutions to the state’s perpetuated budget problems.

A case in point: reflect upon this potential financial windfall for corporations considered by legislators who are also ironically contemplating budget cuts and pension reform for the rest of us: "A package of tax breaks aimed at helping business and keeping a few high-profile companies from leaving Illinois could cost the government $850 million a year in its current form, raising the possibility that it will have to be scaled back to win approval from the Legislature. The package started as a move to lower the tax bill for two Chicago-based financial exchanges, CME Group Inc. and CBOE Holdings Inc., which are threatening to leave Illinois. Add a tax break for Sears to the mix, followed by tax incentives for businesses in general, and then measures to help poor families.

"Each new tax break means less money to run state government, requiring officials to get more money elsewhere or cut services… State government would have to absorb most of that loss, but 6 percent — or about $50 million — would hit the budgets of local governments across Illinois" (Associated Press, November 18, 2011).  

So why can’t the State of Illinois provide a fair and sound tax system (Illinois is one of seven states with a regressive flat-rate tax), one that is “efficient with minimal impact on the economic decisions that taxpayers have to make” (CTBA), one that captures increased revenues in times of economic growth, one that maintains revenue collections during poor economic times, one that is simple and not liable to inconspicuous error, one that is transparent and builds trust with the state’s government officials (CTBA), and one that helps 99 percent of the state’s population?

The answer is most legislators in the State of Illinois prefer the easy way out of a difficult and challenging situation. Illinois legislators will not address the most important causes of the state's budget deficits: the state's flat-rate taxation and pension debt because of their own self-interests and the wealthy one percent that bankrolls them.

-Glen Brown

Pension Hybrid Plans, Constitutional Challenges, and the Ethical Path to Take

Recently, a colleague sent me a brief about the State of Rhode Island’s pension reform. That state’s current reform proposal features a hybrid plan that combines a defined-benefit and defined-contribution savings plan. Imagine an option that would divide a teacher’s contribution as follows: from a 9.4 percent contribution, perhaps 5 percent would be contributed to a defined-benefit plan and 4.4 percent would be contributed to a defined-contribution savings plan, where both the employer and the employee would share the market risk with the supposition that the earnings from the defined-contribution plan would still reap the financial recompenses of group investing.

In other words, “a defined-contribution savings plan could be stacked on top to provide additional retirement income for those at the higher end of the pay scale. Such an approach would ensure a more equitable sharing of risks and would also prevent headlines generated by the occasional inflated public pension benefit” (Center for Retirement Research, April 2011).

We might ask, however, whether there are legal repercussions for such pension reforms. In Rhode Island, for instance, “pension reform is more than just an educational, financial and political issue. It’s also a legal issue” (Education Sector Policy Briefs, November 2011). In Illinois, it's also a constitutional issue.

It’s an educational issue because an essential goal for any state when considering pension reform is to attract and retain the finest possible teacher candidates available. It’s a financial issue because pension reform should be fair, affordable and address the issue of continued sustainability of the pension system. This has been duly noted elsewhere that “saving the pension system entirely on the backs of new teachers will not only fail to solve a state’s financial problems, more importantly, it will rob its future by making it more difficult to recruit new teachers” (Education Sector Policy Briefs…). This factor has apparently been forgotten by Illinois legislators, along with the fact that the State of Illinois will also have a serious Social Security issue to address in the not so distant future if a hybrid plan is passed for new teachers.

Furthermore, it’s a political issue because it entails the distinction among assumptions, values, beliefs and facts; the necessity for conflict resolution; and the application of powerful decision-making that will affect hundreds of thousands of people’s lives. Finally, it’s a legal issue because pension reform should concur with constitutional law and, therefore, be safeguarded.

Indeed, we are also aware that a challenge to a state’s constitution might take the form of a state’s exercise of “power as a sovereign to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens” (Education Sector Policy Briefs…). In regards to the “diminishing or impairing” of a clause or contract that protects citizens’ rights, the United States Supreme Court has held “that the court must establish that impairment is reasonable and necessary to serve an important public purpose, such as ‘the remedying of a broad and general social or economic problem.’ To show that a change is necessary, the state must establish that no less drastic modification could have been implemented to accomplish the state’s goal; and that the state could not have achieved its public policy goal without modification” (Education Sector Policy Briefs…).

This particular option has seldom been brought to the test, and for good reasons. To declare that a state is in an “emergency state,” will ignite legal questions and litigation about the competency and ethical motivations of the policy makers and whether they had truly exhausted every alternative available to them for resolving a state’s financial debts.

Moreover, according to Dave Urbanek, TRS Public Information Officer: “State law [in Illinois] empowers TRS (40 ILCS 5/16-158c)… Payment of the required State contributions and of all pensions, retirement annuities, death benefits…, all other benefits…, and all expenses are obligations of the State… The State has waved its sovereign immunity in regard to the teachers’ pension because TRS is a qualified pension plan under the tax-deferred provisions of the IRS code. Federal law would protect all claims..."

In a recent decision concerning the reduction or elimination of a statutory exemption for public-pension incomes, for example, one state’s Supreme Court’s conclusion was unequivocal: “the people can and should expect shared sacrifice; however, it cannot come at the expense of constitutional nullification, and the legislature cannot expect to balance the budget on the backs of state workers” (State of Michigan in the Supreme Court, August 2011).

If we want “everyone” to share the burden for our state’s financial problems besides the new and future public employees of Illinois who, as the result of SB 1946, are now paying down the state’s mounting service debt (which will have to be eventually addressed), a way for legislators to collect needed revenue ethically is to raise the taxes of the wealthy elite and bring to a halt the corporate blackmailing of state government and the awarding of lucrative tax breaks.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (November 2009) maintains that the top 5 percent of income earners in Illinois pay the least amount of sales, excise, property, and income taxes because of federal deduction offsets or substantial tax savings from itemized deductions, such as capital gains tax breaks and deductions for federal income taxes paid that are coupled with an antiquated flat-rate tax structure.

Legislators should also consider spreading the tax base in Illinois: “A high-quality revenue system relies on a diverse and balanced range of sources… If reliance is divided among numerous sources and their tax bases are broad, rates can be made low in order to minimize the impact on behavior. A broad base itself helps meet the goal of diversification since it spreads the burden of the tax among more payers than a narrow basis does. And the low rates that broad bases make possible can improve a state’s competitive position relative to other states” (National Conference of State Legislatures, June 2007).

What is more, legislators should consider including the taxation of services instead of raising state income taxes. Consistent with creating a broader tax base, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (July 2011) argues that the tax system in Illinois and most other states do not reflect today’s economic realities. States that do not tax services, such as Illinois, “probably could increase [its] sales tax revenue by more than one-third if [it] taxed services purchased by households comprehensively” (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, July 2009).

Let us not forget the underlying reasons that have caused the pension systems’ unfunded liability in the first place. The unfunded liability of the pension systems in Illinois grew exponentially because of the state’s inconsistent funding methods for decades, the state’s unreliable accounting methods, and the special deals made by legislators and other stakeholders that were to be funded with future monies.

The scapegoating of public employees intensified when greed and corruption, particularly flagrant in the financial sector, exploded into the Great Recession. This, of course, came after eight years of inordinate military spending for two costly wars, deregulation and unprecedented tax cuts for the wealthy by the federal government. This tsunami of debt contributed to every state’s budget deficits.

A final question and answer for all of us to ponder: now who found it self-serving to confound the facts of the matter and shift the blame for the resultant economic debacle occurring in Illinois? The answer is those who benefit most by ignoring the injustices inherent in our state’s archaic system of income distribution, regressive tax loopholes for the wealthy, and flat-rate taxation. In other words, a three-headed Cerberus (better known as Tyrone Fahner of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago; his doppelganger, Laurence Msall’s of the Civic Federation; and their mouthpiece, the Chicago Tribune) has hoodwinked the citizenry of Illinois. This is made quite evident by Fahner’s Illinois Is Broke advertisements and their emphasis on so-called pension reform (Senate Bill 512) that will ensure the continuation of obscene profits that flow east along the River Styx of Chicago to the doors of 21 South Clark Street.

-Glen Brown

Munditia, Patron Saint of Lonely Women

(St. Peter’s Church, Munich)

She is believed to have been martyred in 310 A.D., beheaded 
with a hatchet. Once kept hidden in a wooden box,
she was put on display in 1883. Each year, a feast day is held
in her honor complete with a High Mass and candle procession
on November 17th.

for M.K.

She was propped up one day
in a black-and-silver sepulcher
with an eternal glass view,
her vest sewn with gaudy charms,
her gloved hands clutching a chalice
half-filled with sand
and a long golden feather.

How difficult to look at those eyes,
fixed in a perpetual stare mocking death,
at her stone-studded skeleton
encased in glass, and to think
about her estranged life,
a lifetime devoted to Christ, her ex-lover,
and how you said:
"Poor, pitiful woman cheated by faith
and her celibate single-mindedness."

And then to imagine that someone
could bejewel her, knowing all along
that her most precious gem,
her locus of power,
had rotted away to bone
where "even from the tomb
the voice of nature cries."


“Munditia, Patron Saint of Lonely Women” was originally published in Willow Review, 1992.

“Munditia, Patron Saint of Lonely Women” also received awards from Willow Review and Poet Magazine in 1992.

Sustainability, Affordability and Constitutionality: Are They Compatible?

How do we balance sustainability of the public pension system, affordability for the State of Illinois, and constitutionality (Bob Lyons, TRS Trustee)?

Illinois legislators realize that the cost of ramping up payments to address the unfunded liability is unaffordable based upon today’s depressing revenue projections. “In 1995, Illinois passed a pension-ramp bill requiring significant, annual increases in the state's contribution to its public employee retirement systems, to make up for a decades long practice of failing to make the full, employer contributions into the system. That is why the pension contribution escalates… each year. It is also why Illinois has a [total] unfunded liability in excess of $83 billion today [for all five public pensions]” (Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, CTBA).

What can any union leader or anyone else, for that matter, offer the state that will address the increasing service debt and decrease school district contributions and the required state contributions through 2045? According to Buck Consultants (June 2010), total school district contributions will not begin to decrease until 2043, and combined state and federal funds that are required will continue to increase until 2046.

How much do we need to pay of the service debt to keep the teachers’ retirement pension plan and the other four public pension plans solvent, even though the plans have always had an unfunded liability with fluctuating funding ratios that will never come due all at once? What proposals are there besides the Civic Committee’s flawed SB 512? Why would some legislators vote for a bill that has both obvious and unforeseen consequences for everyone “unless something better comes along?”

Why aren’t there any Nobel-prize winning economists of Illinois in this discussion? Where are the most prominent Illinois lawyers, and why aren't their opinions being solicited regarding legal ramifications? Why are we hearing only from the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago that has much to gain from the passing of SB 512?

Should the IEA negotiate and "impair" the 1970 pension clause (Article XIII, Section 5)? Did SB 7 ruin any possibility for good-faith negotiations with state legislators (remember what Jonah Edelman revealed)? Is it because of the belief that once one side gives up something inviolable, the other side will insist for more concessions? How will any negotiation affect union members who pay their dues consistently to ensure that their hard-earned benefits are not decreased because public employees, such as teachers, only have one retirement pension and not Social Security to rely upon?

Can the IEA and other unions offer anything by way of negotiation on the issue that “something must be done” about the unfunded liability and the increasing state payments? What should teachers give up to solve the financial problems of this state that are the resultant causes of past-and-present greed, corruption and incompetence?

Moreover, is it fair that teachers and other public employees remain scapegoats for the problems that they did not cause? Indeed, few people care about the legal, moral and ethical appeals that are grounded in such an argument. However, why didn’t the state “consider implementing a new revenue source targeted to repaying pension liabilities that is independent of base revenue streams from income, sales, excise and utility taxes” (CTBA, 2006)? Why didn’t the state also consider a broader tax base and/or taxation of services instead of an increase in income taxes?

The passing of SB 1946 last April of 2010 (the current Tier-Two plan that began in January 2011) will most likely assure the demise of the Tier-One defined-benefit plan. Consider that the current proposed and amended SB 512 by freezing benefits in the Tier-One defined-benefit plan (for those who choose a Tier-Two option for its six percent contribution rate, capped final salary, reduced Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) and full retirement benefits at the age of 67) will also hasten the demise of the Tier-One defined benefit plan. Consider the inevitability that members who choose the Tier-Three defined-contribution plan (401K) will also hasten the demise of the Tier-One benefit plan, and this will do nothing to eliminate the unfunded liability that the state is required to pay.

One thing seems certain: both current and retired teachers and their families have the most to lose by passing the amended SB 512. Consider that the Tier-One defined-benefit plan depends upon membership contributions for its sustainability, precarious contributions from the State of Illinois, and volatile Market investment returns.

According to the IEA president, Cinda Klickna, "We need to develop a plan that is constitutional, fair to the participants and will ensure the systems will, for many decades to come, continue to deliver the benefits earned by the participants and retirees. The pension systems must be sustainable." The teachers of Illinois are anxiously waiting for that plan.

So what might follow SB 512? Imagine an amendment to the state constitution that challenges Article XIII, Section 5, or a reduction or elimination of the retirees’ COLA and the taxation of their annuity, or the shifting of the state's pension costs to school districts...? What about state bankruptcy as an option? Just ask our U.S. Senator from Illinois, Mark Kirk, about this absurd possibility.

-Glen Brown